


Sussex and Bees

by ceywoozle, UpYourStreet (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Retirementlock, Sussex, The Neverending Story - Freeform, and also bees, oh and there's a cat now too, seriously we will just keep adding onto this forever, with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:25:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2530550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceywoozle/pseuds/ceywoozle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/UpYourStreet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty years after Sherlock and John part ways, they finally find each other again.</p><p>Can be read as a finished piece but leaving it open because we keep accidentally adding to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sherlock

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a tumblr post that we hijacked. Sorry about that.
> 
> Sherlock written by UpYourStreet, John written by ceywoozle.

Sherlock is rifling through some old papers when a photo falls out and flutters to the floor. It lands face down, showing only the yellowed backing and its tattered, dog-eared edges.

Sherlock knows what that photograph is before he picks it up. How many times has he held it in his hands? How often had he carried it with him pressed between pages of books or tucked into file folders for safe keeping?

It’s been years, but the ache is still raw.

When Sherlock turns the photograph over, John Watson’s smiling face greets him.

Sherlock hasn’t seen that expression in person for a long, long time.

The photo was taken some twenty years ago, though Sherlock can’t remember exactly why, and he has kept it with him for all this time, finding it both a comfort and a stinging reminder of what he had once.

But Sherlock is determined to not waste yet another whole day staring at it, so he tucks it away amongst the old papers and tries to forget.

But, then again, maybe he ought to ring John up, try to get back in touch. It would be infinitely preferable to a picture.

He’s reaching for his mobile before he can stop to think about it too much. His heart is shamefully starting to pound as he dials John’s number. He’s not sure what to say, but he’ll think of something. John was always so easy to talk to.

The call rings once before it is answered by an automated voice. Sherlock’s heart sinks to his knees.

"The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service."

Sherlock closes his eyes and ends the call.

Of course, yes.  _Stupid_. How could be so  _stupid_? He remembers now reading a small wedding notice in the newspaper of one Dr. John H. Watson to a woman whose name Sherlock could not be bothered to know. Of course John’s number would be different. The notice said they would be living abroad.

He could track John down if he wanted to, but would John want that? Would he welcome a sudden appearance by Sherlock?

Sherlock puts away his mobile and goes to make a cuppa for himself. He works on autopilot, not noticing a thing he’s doing as he’s too busy thinking about John. Missing John. Wishing he hadn’t let them drift apart.

When Sherlock finally looks down at what he’s doing, he sees he’s made two cups of tea.

The only sound in the room is the clock ticking, each second passing by without John.

Sherlock drinks his tea and dumps out the second mug.


	2. John

It’s strange, John thinks, staring at the edge of the photograph. Yellow where doesn’t quite fit in his wallet. Married for fifteen years and it’s this face that he keeps with him. Never looking at it. Just…there.

The leather of his wallet is skin soft and crumbling in places where it’s dried out, but not once has he considered exchanging it for a new one. Jen had tried. It was sort of a joke between them. Every Christmas he would open his gift, the one gift they allowed each other, and it would be a wallet. New, gleaming. Ox blood and lime green and black and the dark stain of old oak. Every year a different colour. He would unwrap it and look at her over the ruin of bright paper and smile and she would grin back. A question in it he had never been ready to answer, asked every year with that single gesture. And every year he had gripped her hand and kissed her on the lips, loving her. Loving her so much it hurt. And put the wallet with the ones that had come before, a bright rainbow in his bedside drawer.

Wallets he would never use but could never throw out. Waiting, in hope, for the day when he would be able to draw that photograph from its settled home. But that would mean touching it. It would mean looking. And he hadn’t. Could never bring himself to do so, even with Jen watching him with soft, sad eyes, understanding and hoping at all once.

Jen. Dead for three years now. Cancer, of course. Everything dies of cancer these days. He tries to remember her face but can’t. A brief image of tired eyes and flesh worn down to bone between his clutching fingers.

He stares at the yellow edge of paper in his wallet. The same wallet. Crumbling between his hands. It’s not Christmas yet, not for three weeks, but he asks himself the question nonetheless. The question that Jen is no longer there to ask.

He stares at the yellow edge of a photograph he hasn’t looked at in twenty years and finds that he doesn’t even need to see it. He can picture the face it depicts with perfect clarity and he wonders at the injustice of it. All this time. All those years trying to forget, to erase it, to overlap it with something else. And all those years Jen had waited for him, never pushing, simply asking. And he had given her nothing.

It’s her birthday tomorrow. He remembers that, at least. He thinks of her, tries to conjure up the ghost of her laugh. The joy he must have felt. He knows he had felt. But there’s nothing left there. He takes the photograph by its edge and draws it out.

There. Like new. Like it’s been waiting. He stares at the face, scowling at the effrontery of the camera lens. He can hear it, that voice, a low baritone,  _stop it, John!_ and so clear is it in his mind that he actually looks up, expecting to see its owner in the room with him, perched at the edge of a kitchen chair with his fingers on the knob of a microscope, trying to see something invisible.

Sherlock Holmes. Who had never been able to see the one thing John Watson had always wished he could. He wonders, not for the first time but with the grief, the bitterness somewhat dissipated over the years, if he had been able to smear his love on a slide if Sherlock would have been able to see it then.

Useless to think that way, though. It was so long ago. Not even important any more.

"Stop it, John," he says to himself, and with a small sound that might be grief he slides the photograph back into its slot and puts his wallet back in his pocket.

He doesn’t sleep that night, but that’s nothing new. He doesn’t sleep most nights. The curse of getting old. The curse of being him. He lays awake and stares at the ceiling, thinking of Jen. Thinking of her birthday. Thinking of Christmas, three weeks away.

As soon as it’s light outside he gets out of bed. Dresses as if it’s a normal morning. And it is, in a way. It just depends on what your definition of normal is. He goes to his computer, the screen dark, and the shock of its brightness makes him squint for a minute until his eyes get  used to it. He types in his search, two fingers pecking reluctantly over the familiar keyboard.

It pops up on the first go. A website. A number. He is reaching for his cell phone without thought. He marvels at his own calm as he punches in the unfamiliar sequence, his fingers stumbling over the keys slightly. His heart rate is normal, his breathing not even slightly disturbed. He wonders at himself, at his own coolness in the face of this. This thing that is monumental but also inevitable. He presses the call button and listens to the ringing on the other end and realises why he’s so calm. Because he knew all along that this is what he was going to do. That this is something that had to happen.

And when the ring tone stops and hears the fumble on the other end, the familiar voice, still strong but deeper even than it used to be with age, like gravel rumbling down a hill, and the name,  _"Sherlock Holmes. Don’t be boring."_  John knows, with a smile that cracks the edges of his face, that it will be all right.


	3. Sherlock

Sherlock checks his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. He refuses to poke his head out the window and wait like an eager puppy, but it’s hard to resist the urge.

He hears a car pull up. He hears feet crunching in gravel.

There’s a knock at the front door.

"It’s open!" Sherlock calls. He can’t bear to open it himself. To see the man standing on the other side. He is seized by the weight of his need. It makes his feet heavy and impossible to move.

"Sherlock?"

God in hell, that voice. That voice that sends Sherlock’s heart pounding.

"In here," Sherlock says, softer this time, and then John is there, standing in the doorway to the sitting room. He’s handsome as he ever was and greying and winkled and wearing a long coat and a scarf. No moustache to be seen.

A smile spills over Sherlock’s lips and he doesn’t try to mask it.

"Hello." he says.

"Hello, you." John replies.

They stand there staring at each other, and someone makes the first move, but Sherlock can’t be bothered to notice because his arms are full with John Watson suddenly and he is incandescently happy.

"I missed you." Sherlock confides into John’s hair. He says it softly. "I missed you, John."

John’s arms squeeze tight around Sherlock and for the first time in many, many years, there is the sound of John’s breath and John’s voice soaring crystal clear over the sound of the ticking clock. Every second is full of John, every moment suddenly interesting again.


	4. John

The drive is interminable. He wonders how Sussex could be this far. It must have been three days at least. A week sitting in this ridiculous little car that Jen had insisted they buy seven years ago, bright red with two doors and a boot instead of a back seat. He feels absurdly large being inside it and he supposes he should be grateful for that, at least.

This drive.

This interminable drive.

When he reaches the village, tiny and isolated, he almost stops to ask for directions. But he crests a rise on the main street and as soon as he does he can see the house. Unmistakeable. A quarter of a mile outside the village at least and settled on top of a hill. It's an ordinary house, really. White, as far as he can see from this distance, but hints of yellow and a long patch of what must be a garden. He doesn't know why he's so sure. But he is.

Unlike the rest of the journey, the quarter mile seems like nothing. Too fast. Far too fast. He slows the car down till it's going thirty miles an hour. Then Twenty. Then fifteen. Then ten and he's barely moving but the little white cottage is getting closer, the yellow showing up in soft relief, the individual spindles of the long garden fence covered in winter dead vines, slowly becoming clear until there is no road left. Just driveway, with a parking space at the end where an ancient black Volkswagen sits hibernating.

He stops the car. Turns it off. The silence is overwhelming, a physical thing that settles around him and suffocates until he opens the door to the sounds of the world out of sheer self preservation.

It's quiet. So quiet. But the silence is broken. By the mumuration of wind in dry grass, the rattle of dead leaves, the lazy buzz of bees. And he smiles, because he's not at all surprised.

He shuts the car door, suddenly remembering to be calm. As he walks to the door, one step at a time, the sense of inevitability returns to him. His wallet is a heavy presence in his pocket. A new one. The oxblood one. He had picked it out from among the multi-coloured collection before he had left Leeds, the home he had had for twenty years, and slotted each note, each credit card, each rewards card and gift card and business card into their new homes until only the photo had been left. When finally he had taken it out he had stared at it. For the second time. And remembering Jen, he had given it its new home. And in the slot next to it, for the first time, was Jen herself. Smiling at him, forty-five years old again. He had thanked her and told her, his voice cracking against his will, that he loved her. That this, with everything else, would never really change.

Now he stands at a door, green paint flaking from its rough boards, and watches as if from somewhere else as his hand raises of its own accord. The rap of his knuckle against the wood is almost featherlight but he hears the voice regardless, gravel-deep and unforgotten, “It's open!”

He pushes in and for the first time in twenty years, he can hear his own heart beating.

There is a hallway that he doesn't notice. A doorway and a sitting room to which he pays no attention. There is nothing to see in them. Nothing he needs to know. Everything that is important is concentrated on a single spot on a faded old rug, feet together and shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow. Sherlock. Sherlock.

_Sherlock._

The universe stops. The silence is back but it doesn't weigh on him anymore. It is light. It is so light. Making room for him to move through, his momentum setting the world to turning and he can feel it falling upright and pushing him on until the space is gone, the inches and yards and miles and years simply gone and he doesn't know how it happens, if it's even okay, if this Sherlock is more amenable to intimacy than the old Sherlock but John doesn't know how to stop himself from taking that still-narrow frame in his arms, bony and straight with curls turned iron-grey and face lined and more beautiful than before. He takes it until there is no space left between them, until the universes become nothing, until there is warmth and heart beats and the whisper of breath, unsteady and loud against his ear. Breath that is not his own but that he feels he can inhale as something that belongs to him nonetheless. He doesn't know he's crying until years later, ages, aeons, when he pulls back far enough to see that face again and he sees the damp spot on Sherlock's shoulder, where his face had pressed against him and his shirt had soaked up both his grief and his joy.

“I missed you,” Sherlock says and it is close, so close that John feels like he could inhale those words and make them his own, use them to assuage the ache that is making it so hard to breathe. “I missed you, John.”


	5. Sherlock

Possibly they had moved too quickly, but then again, the first time around, John moved in within one day of them meeting so this, perhaps, wasn’t moving too quickly at all, it was moving perfectly in time.

Sherlock looks into the sitting room. John’s things are there, already perfectly at home as though they had been there all along. The entire house feels that way now. Everything found its place.

Sherlock looks into the kitchen and sees two empty mugs side by side in the sink.

In the entryway there are two coats and two pairs of shoes, all perfectly happy to be mingled together. One of John’s shoes is sitting over top of one of Sherlock’s, and Sherlock’s coat is hanging over top of John’s. Just as it should be. Even Sherlock’s hat, his _detective hat_ , sits on a hook over which John’s scarf is wound.

In the bathroom, there are two toothbrushes, one blue and one grey, slotted side by side in their holder. Memories of 221B drift through Sherlock’s head. They don’t hurt, those memories. Not anymore.

In the bedroom, there is one bed. One pair of slippers sit at the end of it on the floor. One dressing gown hangs in the wardrobe. For too many years that bed was empty and lonely, far too big and luxurious for one man. For too many years that wardrobe sat half empty.

John stirs. “Sherlock? Are you skulking around in the dark again? Come to bed, you madman.”

Sherlock smiles to himself and places his slippers beside John’s. He hangs up his dressing gown over top of John’s. Then, with a lightness in his chest, he happily slides into the bed next to John.

There are two people in the bed now, curled around each other, and it seems as though the entire house has finally settled.


	6. John

John watches Sherlock pace the flat, peering at objects seemingly at random. He knows what he’s doing. He’s done the same thing a hundred times himself in the week that he’s been here.

A week. It feels like an age. It feels like an hour.

Finding evidence. Finding proof. Unnecessary. He knows this is real. Knows it could be nothing else. That it was the twenty years before it that had been the dream.

But he hasn’t done it in the dark, this ritualistic desire to see the truth of it all over again. He doesn’t have to, because he sleeps now, easily and deeply, never waking in the night at all except for times like this, when the soft pad of bare feet breaks into his dreams and the cold place at his side causes him to shift and reach out to emptiness. An emptiness waiting to be filled, that will be filled again by the sound of his own voice, quiet with the dark, seeking out its occupant in the shadows.

Then to have Sherlock reappear, like something fading into light, and the warmth returned with a dip in the mattress and a small grunt as he settles in and wraps himself around John’s heat, finding his place in the proper allotment of limbs and torsos and lips. The slow seeping of body heat shared and distributed until they’re both too warm and the blankets disappear in a heap on the floor and there are more hands than can be logically accounted for in the fumbling of shared desire.

And afterwards, when their blood begins to cool again and the blankets rediscovered, they lay there and smile to themselves in the dark.

A week. Only a week. And Sherlock gives a sigh and burrows a unforgotten nose into an unforgotten neck and whispers, “John. How do you feel about cats?”


	7. John

It takes three days for John to realise that Sherlock was serious. A cat. _A cat?_ He somehow can't imagine it. 

It's over breakfast one morning, John licking honey off a spoon, his tongue sticky and his fingers coated in gold, that Sherlock looks up from the obituaries and says, “It's for the mice.”

John blinks. He's lost in a haze of sticky warmth and a quiet joy that hasn't quite left him yet, ten days after he's moved in. He's thinking vaguely of the phone call he has to make to the realtor who is selling the Leeds flat for him. She'd phoned yesterday, an offer from a young couple, a little below the asking rate. He thinks he'll let them have it. He doesn't need it, doesn't want it. He thinks of himself twenty-six years ago, and mentally wishes them the best.

“The mice,” Sherlock says again, insistently peering into John's face with intense grey eyes. “The mice, John!” as if John's the one who's having the communication problems.

“What in God's name are you talking about?” John says somewhat wonderingly at the intelligence and the obtuseness of this man, even after all these years.

Sherlock huffs and rolls his eyes. _Good Lord. He hasn't changed at all,_ John thinks and can't quite keep the grin off his face.

Sherlock sees it and glares. “If you're going to be wilfully obtuse,” he snaps, and sweeps off with his dressing gown behind him, the effect only slightly marred by the limp he now carries from a twisted knee collected nineteen and a half years ago. John remembers it. Remembers treating it. Remembers touching that limb for what he had then thought would be the last time in his life, filled with terror and anguish and knowing that he didn't have a choice. The he was running out of time to save himself. He remembers the awareness of it in Sherlock's eyes, and abruptly that long broad back, once more, for the last time, shutting John out. 

He looks at that same back now, still narrow, not quite so broad with muscle as it once was, and smiles. He gets up and follows it to where it stops at the music stand and John wraps himself around it, finding that heat, needing to feel it again and know that it's his. 

“My mind must be failing,” John laments into the soft warmth of his second body. “Enlighten this ancient, stupid man. What about the mice, my love?” 

_My love._ They haven't tried endearments yet. He wonders what Sherlock will say. 

In his arms, the stiff frame softens. Long bony hands find his before being dropped again and Sherlock turns in John's embrace, wrapping thin arms around him and pulling him close. Warm lips find John's neck, then his chin, then his own lips and they stand like that for a little bit, kissing softly in the morning light. 

When they pull apart, John gives himself the luxury of staring and Sherlock, smirking gently, puts his hands over John's bum and gives a squeeze.

John scowls to cover his grin. “The mice, Sherlock,” he reminds him. 

“What mice?” Sherlock asks huskily. His lips are already looking for John again and John thinks about trying to pull them back to the matter at hand but he realises, without much regret, that it's a battle he neither needs nor wants to win.


	8. John

It's afterwards, in the deep cocoon of the blankets, their skin sticky against each other and with John ensconced in the firm embrace of Sherlock's arm, that Sherlock brings it up again.

“It's for the mice, John.”

John freezes for a second, waiting for more to come. But that seems to be the extent of Sherlock's explanation and he gives a sigh.

“Sherlock. You just buggered me into the mattress for the first time. You're going to have to be more specific if you want me to join in on this conversation.”

He can almost feel Sherlock roll his eyes. He definitely hears the smug grin in his voice, though, when he gives an impatient huff and says, “The cat, John! What else could I possibly be talking about?”

“Ah. The cat. Wait. We have mice?”

“Everyone has mice, John.”

“I haven't seen any.”

“Yes, but that doesn't mean much.”

“Git.”

“Idiot.”

“I love you.”

“Not as much as I love you.”

“Not possible.”

“I'm sure there's a way to test it.”

“Shut up, Sherlock.”

Sherlock does, but gets the last word anyway by pressing his lips to John's temple, the closest he can get to John's lips from his present position. John, gracious in defeat, turns his face upwards to help.

It takes a while for them to roll out of bed for the second time that day. It's December and despite the solid frame of the small cottage and the fire burning in the grate, the cold has managed to seep in and make the floor chill.

John showers first, aware of the ache in his rear. He wonders if he should feel resentful but can only smile, his face cracking under the strain of it. It seems too much. All at once it's too much and he makes himself think of cats before he finds himself wrapped in a ball in a corner, giggling hysterically.

Sherlock wanders in as he's rinsing off, throwing off his dressing gown with a habitual flourish and stepping into the hot stream of water as John steps out. They touch each other as they pass, fingers slipping on skin.

They take John's car, because the shocks are in better shape, but Sherlock drives. John fidgets the whole way, trying to get comfortable and failing while Sherlock smirks at the road ahead.

They don't go far. A fifteen minute drive over country roads before reaching the A268. By the time they reach Northiam forty minutes later, John has just found a comfortable position in which to sit. He scowls at Sherlock, who walks around to open his door and help him climb out of the tiny vehicle. John rewards him with a shove and Sherlock chuckles as he regains his balance, grasping for John's hand so that they walk into the animal shelter like that, both of them trying not to smile.

It's a surprisingly sizable shelter, an old converted farm where a group of dogs chase each other around a fenced in green. There is someone at the front to greet them, a woman a few years older that they are perhaps, her long iron-grey hair hidden by a bright scarf.

It's John who does the introductions, and at the end of them she holds out a graceful hand, covered in hair thin scratches. “My name is Meera,” she says kindly to John, then turns to Sherlock. “Of course, I remember you, Mr Holmes. You're looking much better.”

John glances sideways at Sherlock, who is blushing fiercely with a familiar haughty look on his face.

“Yes, well,” he says with an aborted wave of his hand. “We're looking for a cat.”

She smiles. “I'm happy you've remembered us, then.”

She takes them around herself, introducing them to the various animals. There are perhaps thirty in all, or varying ages and temperaments in large spacious cages. Some of the pens have several cats, lying twisted together in contented heaps. Others hold a single animal, several of whom sleep stretched out on perches and beds, while one or two younger looking animals leap around after bean-filled mice or wrestle with old blankets.

John, remembering what Sherlock said about mice, starts looking closely at the energy and age of the animals. Sherlock's wandered off and John, crouching in front of a cage holding two high-spirited tabbies—brothers, just over a year old—is just about to call to Sherlock to have a look when Sherlock beats him to it.

“John, I've found him.”

John looks around but can't see the animal because Sherlock's body is blocking the way. He heaves himself to his feet, chirping a soft goodbye to the brothers, and goes to stand next to Sherlock.

It's a cat, anyway. He thinks.

He looks at Sherlock. Then looks back at the cat.

“I thought you said he was supposed to catch mice.”

“I'm sure once he catches one or two he'll get the hang of it,” Sherlock says.

“Yes, well, it's the one or two I'm wondering about.”

Sherlock gives him a look filled with disdain. “Don't be ridiculous, John. Cats are natural hunters.”

John turns his gaze back to the enormous sprawl of fur, tucked in a black loaf the size of a small boulder. A single patch of white, like a moustache, mars the perfect gleaming ebony of its soft coat.

“He's thirteen and his name is Felix and he hates children,” says Sherlock. “He's perfect.”

John stares with fascination as the boulder in the cage starts to shift and John is sure the earth's rotation shifts several degrees as first two, then four short legs appear as if disgorged from that mammoth heap. All four paws are white, as if dipped in paint, and John watches as the two front ones reach out and a neck appear as if from nowhere. A wide pink maw opens wide in a world swallowing yawn, and as two wide yellow eyes open in a flat, round face and the moustache starts to vibrate, a sound not unlike a car starting emerges from its Stygian depths.

“Jesus Christ,” says John.

“No, I said Felix,” Sherlock corrects impatiently. “Let's find Meera.”

 


	9. John

Felix doesn't chase mice.

Which isn't such a problem, John realises, since they don't actually have mice. He wonders if he should be annoyed, but decides he had probably already figured it out. It doesn't surprise him that Sherlock couldn't just come out and say he wanted a cat. It's the lingering traces of the younger man, the need for reason, for the _why_ instead of the _why not._ So John, watching Felix avalanche out of the tiny carrier, like dough expanding in a too small pan, starts making a mental list of what they'll need.

“We should have stopped at the shops,” he says.

Sherlock gives him a withering look. “Our cat doesn't need anything from the store, John.”

“Ah. Of course. Erm. Litter? Perhaps?”

“He'll go outside. He's a wild animal, John.”

“Right. Erm. Food?”

“I've made some. It's in the freezer. Only for when he doesn't hunt, of course.”

“Oh. I suppose you—”

“Raw, non-medicated chicken, the meat as well as liver, heart of course, and ground bone. Kale, leaf lettuce, yams, zucchini, squash, egg yolk, salmon oil. I have several game alternatives, as well, including lamb, venison, wild boar, duck, and pheasant, as an excess of poultry risks calcium and phosphorus imbalance.”

“Erm. And the. Um. _Heart?”_

“Taurine, of course.”

“Amazing.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Will he eat it? I mean. He's been fed dry pellets.”

“It may take him a day or two to get used to it.”

“I see.”

“But he's a wild animal, John.”

John looks at Felix, his four white paws splayed out with claws extended into the rug, slowly shredding it with happy intent. He is still purring. He hasn't stopped purring. Their tiny peaceful cottage sounds like a garage.

“He'll start exploring soon,” Sherlock says, watching the cat with a surprisingly soft look on his face. “Cats are very territorial. He'll want to leave his scent around before he can properly relax.”

John watches as Felix gives a mighty yawn before circling twice and folding into a vibrating mound on the rug.

“Well. Maybe later then,” Sherlock says doubtfully.

They stare at the cat together for a moment longer. Felix starts to snore.

“You know...” John says slowly.

“Shut up, John,” Sherlock says.

“Right.”

 

 


End file.
